The Tex Factor: Big State, Tiny Homes

my name is Kathleen Glasgow and I am a tiny homeowner hi my name is Elena Callaway and I'm a new tiny home owner I'm Caitlin schrobb I am a tiny house owner and I live here with my husband and two kids so this is the Lake Dallas tiny home Village we're the first Village of Our Kind it was built as a tiny home Village from the start it wasn't a mobile home Village or an RV park or anything we built it as a tiny home Village foreign so we started the process in 2016. and it took a while to get through the city hall processes and the issues that they were having and we were able to open in late 2018. we have 13 Lots everyone brings their own home the homes have to meet certain standards the city has specific requirements and then we also have specific requirements so we know we're going to get a really good home when somebody brings one in so with the lot that they rent they get water sewer trash and then we have a use of the Washateria residents only have to pay for electricity and internet the affordability factor is huge in the with the tiny homes especially in the last few years where even a 3-2 home is out of the reach of most people it really was the pandemic I was had a three bedroom two bath house 1300 square feet which is a small house compared to a lot of people but my roommate she was a bartender and so she actually had to still go out you know to work in a restaurant I didn't leave my bedroom except to go to the bathroom to make food in my kitchen and I realized I don't need anything more than that much space [Music] watching your future home being pulled by a truck on the highway through downtown Dallas and it was exciting and nerve-wracking because as soon as we got behind the truck and as they were pulling it through through Dallas it really was ours we knew it was ours and we were worrying about bridges and oh my gosh watch out for that that's our house it was really fun but very surreal and we we as we were watching it backed into the lot here we were we were grinning from ear to ear we were excited we were nervous we knew we'd made the right decision but just bizarre because I've never been in a home that was pulled by a truck and think about living there and Marcelo hadn't either and yet this was something that we both had wanted so it was something that I highly recommend I think you should give it a shot I think the fascination with tiny homes is that they're just so darn cute every one of them has its own look and its own personality and most of our homes were custom built and so they reflect the the owners this is my tiny home Bell is named after Beauty and the Beast Belle is my favorite character she is the Athena model with decathlon tiny homes mine's a little bit longer than most Athena models it's 28 feet by eight foot wide so it's about 240 square feet which is pretty small for most people but for me it's an absolutely perfect amount and I even have a little bit more square feet just for storage I do have a little dog her name is Becca she is a Chihuahua Dachshund mix or they call chiweenies and she's perfect for a tiny home because while she's small but I do know people who have big dogs and multiple big dogs that live in tiny homes it's really all about how you lay out your home foreign welcome to the inside of our tiny home as you can see this is one big room um I'm by the way I'm six feet tall the whole the house is about the ceiling is about 11 at the highest point so it you really don't don't feel like you're you know cramped in here it feels pretty spacious uh let me show you our bathroom [Music] I fit nicely here being six feet tall this is actually a not a bed size bathroom I frankly have been in hotels in Europe where I have much less in this to to to play with um full size uh tub um I will have to duck to be able to take a shower here not the case for Elena but I don't it's a little bit of a compromise that and I can live with that um storage so what do we do for storage we have all sorts of storage everywhere so Under the Stairs you can see these are actually quite deep drawers um a lot of opportunity to store things under the uh the fridge this is an apartment sized fridge but the way they do is if you notice they actually have it raised on a platform so it feels like it's a normal sized fridge you know you would open the freezer at the same height that you would do on a full-size fridge in your home lots of storage up above cabinets down below the builders they even add things like this where you have extra storage and you can use this to put papers manuals and things like that or you know something that you don't access all the time under the the oven as well we have an electric oven we haven't used it yet by the way we're just moving in uh in the process of moving in really but it's a decent size oven we will be able to make a pizza here for sure a two burner electric stove top uh a little bit of a compromise currently we have four so we're going from four down to two but for the two of us that's more than enough uh they call this a low profile microwave and it also it's vented in events to the outside so when you're cooking here and you want to make sure that you don't stink up the whole place you'd be sending the fumes outside uh we have one AC unit it's called a mini split um and it's very efficient I believe we have a 12 000 BTU unit here and it's enough to cool down this whole house and again 32 feet by eight and a half eleven high and one of the reasons why this is such an efficient system uh and it takes care of the spaces because the walls the ceiling and the the trailer the better the trailer they're all insulated with foam insulation so and we have these are new windows they're two years old and they're high efficiency windows so obviously we have a very efficient insulation in this place therefore we don't need a whole lot of cooling we're looking forward to our electrical bill here in Texas in the summer for sure all right let's go upstairs uh we'll take a look at our sleeping Loft [Music] up here we have a bed platform which is which fits a queen size mattress storage space or closet space on both sides like downstairs likewise downstairs you know always built with storage in mind so for example under this seat here we also have additional storage here as well uh there is no storage under the bed however the reason being is you saw the bathroom downstairs the Headroom that I have in them that we have in the bathroom downstairs is because of this platform one important thing especially given Lena's size is uh you know cool little things that the Builder puts on the house like this this little step so I know if you can demonstrate and voila now you know but before before we we lay down here let me show you this too I can pretty much fit even in this corner here I have to duck a little bit I'm also wearing my shoes so it's adding maybe another inch or so uh let's see how we we would fit in the bed um again we're still in the process of moving in so we don't have our mattress yet but as you can see this is plenty of space for the two of us uh another cool thing that we love about the home and most Builders will do this all these lights are dimmable and they're on dimmers so you know if you want to sit back here and read a book or something we can just adjust the lights here they're all in different circuits so we can adjust these and those can be higher or they can be off we have a little TV over there where we're going to be I'm sure we're going to be watching you know some cool Netflix videos or movies from up here eventually you'll be watching the text Factor the tax Factor yes we will um also a little bit of storage back there in that uh in that sort of headboard with some uh um shelving units the fan that you see there in the in the corner it's to facilitate uh and promote more of the their airflow from that AC unit that I showed you downstairs uh it's off right now because it's a little noisy but when we have it uh running it's actually it keeps this this room up here pretty pretty uh nice good temperature so like I said very efficient everything tiny but you know I'm big and I don't feel claustrophobic in here or anything like that okay well now that you've seen the kitchen the bath and this Loft over here I'd like to show you the rest of our tiny home and I'll start by just pointing out one of the many cool features of tiny homes that Builders are brilliant at coming up with and that's utilizing every inch of space so another little feature we have is that right here we have a cubby where we can slip our shoes off if we want to when we come in we actually are pretty tidy people so that's something we plan to do is probably kick our shoes off when we're in here so we don't bring the outdoors in since it's such a small space so moving on into the rest of our tiny home one of the really cool features that this house has that the previous owners designed and that the builders Builders implemented were just built-in table tops that pop up so we can use these or we can keep them down but they just pop up and lock into place so we can just have uh some wine here the TV will be mounted here when we get all moved in because we're not moved in yet we could use it as a workspace a desktop that kind of thing and they just pop right back down very easy we do intend to add bar stools maybe even another type of table that we can pull out when we have more people here because we do hope to have a lot of guests and family here as we get settled in this is a built-in seating area again that the previous owners designed which we prefer and love as well so we don't have to bring in any additional furniture so in addition to the fact that the cushions are uh we can remove them and launder them and things like that there are also there's all sorts of built-in storage underneath these cushions so we can remove these and have places for larger things like bedding blankets things like that that would take up more space and again more storage just so much storage so I've already cut some things in here as you can see more storage for shoes games whatever you might want in this area this even lifts up which again another Brilliance part by the the Builder and the homeowners to make sure there wasn't any wasted space [Music] unlike the other side where you can stand all the way up this is a partial Loft there's a place for either two people to sleep up here or they can push together and make a king bed and again more storage again plenty of plenty of room to put whatever you might need up here with drawers and we also like the fact that if we wanted to we could actually stack these mattresses and create an opening over here so you could actually put some some beanbag chairs or things like that or desks a small desk if you want to make a workspace out of it and again another TV is up here so um and from here you can look across and see uh the other Loft over there and the kitchen and living area down below so that's really uh the other part of our living space and we feel like we have plenty of room here so we're really excited to start getting moved in and see what it's going to be like this is our tiny home we're very excited we've been looking forward to this for for some time now where as you can see we're not quite moved in yet but uh excited about the process of coming in here with our things and and getting to spend some time here we're really looking forward to that we're very picky about who our Builders are and one of those is decathlon tiny homes [Music] [Applause] [Music] I'm April Terry and we build tiny homes [Music] decathlon construction is an outdoor living company we've been in business for about 20 years now and we've moved into building tiny homes about three years ago and we're also still doing the Elder living we design small spaces and with my husband's background in home building and construction we were like hey why not go into building tiny homes or small spaces and we really wanted to make a difference in people's lives we wanted to set you know tiny homes apart and make it real custom and just bold colors and just really fun designs that make sense to people in small spaces [Music] hey Jerry Cherry decathlon tiny homes here and you are in our warehouse for tiny house building I'm the CEO we are licensed to manufacture in the state of Texas you've heard a little bit from April about the design aspect so now we'd like to show you a little bit more of the construction aspect and how it's built so what you're seeing here is uh the skeleton of a home and we have the uh the two by fours are up the floor is in and one thing also to notice here is the trailer so these trailers are built for tiny homes on Wheels so it's very important to have the axles and the tires to support the weight because these homes are built for the road they are meant for the road and you want them to last the test of time and you can't do that if you're not building on a trailer specifically designed for that so why don't we step inside and look at a little bit of the construction aspects so coming on in here uh the first thing you'll probably notice is as you're looking around it looks like a residentially framed home so you have 16 inch on-frame Center walls you have two by double two by six headers a double two by four top plate uh you know very solid flooring at three quarter inch uh CDX decking so you're looking at everything in here that looks very much like a home so as you're living in it over time if you need something done uh everyone that comes in here if there's a handyman or something they're going to know exactly what to do because they're used to seeing exactly what this is because it's framed exactly the same way so coming through here these are meant for the road so this house is eight and a half feet maximum wide so there's a number of things people call tiny homes this is a tiny home on Wheels okay so it's meant for the road so we have to a do a number of things to make sure that it's going to hold up one of the things we do is we have this half inch steel here okay we call it it's all called All Thread Rod I call it my friend Rod because it keeps our house safe on the road okay goes right through the trailer through the top plate and we have three of these on each side of the house essentially turns the home into a roll cage which is what you want when you're designed for the road a number of other things here we have some some hurricane Clips which go top and bottom of the rafters which are not on yet and then any Loft joists we're going to be using the metal joist hangers so you know it's meant for the road and that's something that's very important especially for something that is designed for that also we have the number of codes that we need to pass we pass all three because we want people to be able to take these anywhere so we're here outside of a completed facade model so looking at the outside here what we'll notice is just how solid everything is okay I mean we have you know rock solid siding everything is very tight and as far as living in this house when you're parking your property if you're concerned about things like you know wind or earthquakes or you know rough weather first of all these are not really RVs I mean the title says it's an RV but it's really a tiny house this weighs 16 000 pounds so it's very hard for this to go anywhere not to mention we also have additional ability to tie things down so depending on the area and if you're if you're additionally worried about extremely high winds you just use a heavier tie down you do a concrete pier in the ground and you tie it directly to that you or you could use a lighter tie down if you're not really that concerned or frankly you don't really have to tie it down at all because it weighs 16 000 pounds so this is our Poseidon model and we really like our houses to look like residential homes that was another really big part of our business is we wanted to build tiny homes and wheels that looked and felt like a residential home which you'll notice with the roof line we're not seeing a shed roof here we're seeing hips we're seeing Gable also seeing two different pitches of Gables and we want our house to feel that way not only when you're inside but when you're pulling up in your car ready to go home we want you to feel like you're going home [Music] welcome to Belle this is my tiny home and we're gonna start in my bedroom which I spend a lot of time here this is where I put hang my clothes in the uh in these hanging clothes area and also where I store some of my childhood toys that I could never get rid of um and then my mini split and of course my TV because I love watching TV from bed and then also my t-shirts and regular drawer of clothes this is my living room area and this couch when my sister spends the night she sleeps on this couch and then this is my kitchen this is the largest sink decathlon tiny homes has put in a tiny home to date and I really didn't care about the size I just wanted two separate spaces this is my oven and it's perfect for a tiny house because it can fold away it is an oven air fryer it also toasts bakes it does pretty much everything you need to but if I need a second oven actually this is a convection microwave oven so I actually have two ovens in a tiny home [Music] this is my pantry slash uh you know place to put my brooms my I knew I was going to get this ahead of time so I made sure that they put an outlet right here so this is constantly charging and then one thing that people forget to put in a tiny home is a place to put their garbage and recycling so my garbage recycling is right in here and um my sister has a dog that always likes to get in the garbage so all I have to do is close the door and one keeps him out of it also if it's really smelly then keeps the smell because smell in a tiny house really like carries throughout the entire house this is my bathroom it's the standard decathlon Athena bathroom um which is this is actually a pretty big shower I have to have plenty of room in there I was even able to put a shelf in there just so that I could shave my legs and then this is a huge countertop I have way more storage for my bathroom than I think I actually need over here is a medicine cabinet my fully stackable washer and dryer I have a propane heater for my water it saves on electricity and the my first tank I have two of them my first 50 gallon tank took me about five months to go through which was perfect and then and now I have a whole other 50 gallon tank to use so yeah that's my tiny home [Music] hi I'm Caitlin schrobb I am a tiny house owner and I live here with my husband and two kids and I want to show you how we make it work in 306 square feet Let's uh go for a tour we'll start with our kids rooms so up here is my daughter's room she has a twin size bed and lots of shelving for toy storage we have storage even below the bed as well she's got plenty of floor space closets drawers for toys and clothes she has a pop-up desk which is pretty cool um so here pops right up and so when we have more homework she's six and a half she'll be able to do that up here too and then let me show you my son's room this is my son's room he is three and a half he also has a twin size bed so the bedrooms are a little bit of a Tetris but it works awesome because they both have lots of floor space and then he has the setup with the same setup with closets and drawers um so we find space for everything we have a full kitchen a lot of tiny houses um don't have ovens or um you know maybe they have smaller sized appliances but we have a little bit of a smaller size oven it works great for us um we have a two burner stove top and then an apartment-sized fridge we cook a lot so it really works for us we also cook a lot outside on our Grill this is our bedroom so we have a queen size bed my husband has a computer and a desk he fits his full-size desktop up here he spends quite a bit of time in this spot which is good for you know small space and needing a little bit of time to get away we have a nice big closet we hang a whole bunch of clothes and then we also have drawers if you want to come around and see we have drawers down at the bottom we keep things like crafts and clothes and things that maybe need a home but don't have the typical spot for it this is our living space and so we were kind of in this space all the time and I joke that it's our living room kitchen kitchen uh bedroom area but um our couch we got from home reserve and they're an awesome company because you can kind of custom build your couch and there's lots of storage underneath so all of this like these pop up and we store tons of stuff in there we have the very typical tiny house table um we got this second hand but I think it's Ikea and both sides come up so the other side does as well and we can fit a ton of people here it also has real deep drawers for um things like tea and anything else you might need to store I think the fascination with tiny homes is a lot of things one being it's a tiny home on wheels that alone is very unique and different you don't see every single day it's tiny and compact but yet cute and livable and has everything you need to live like if you were living in an apartment or a house on Foundation the most satisfying part of being the owner and part of this whole village is to be able to see the the residents just living their lives interacting with each other the community here is like nothing I've ever experienced we really want to be here because it feels like we are in the right place with the right people and um we really thought it would take some getting used to but we're already feeling like we're this is where we want to be Lake Dallas tiny home Village is really a big Community when they talk about how you the best way to raise children is with a village I actually feel like especially in our case there's so much space behind our house and there's always someone to play with or someone to chat with or have coffee with so we couldn't be happier with the community experience I feel like it's the way communities should be [Music]

Channel: FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth

Views: 694,713

Keywords: news, video, kdfw, fox 4

Id: 4PeMm7nDjv4

Length: 25min 20sec (1520 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023